The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a copier or printer, more particularly a finishing device for temporally piling, on a stapling tray, a plurality of image formed sheets ejected from a main image forming device and holding them on a piling tray after the rear ends in an ejecting direction of the sheets are bound by a stapler, and an image forming apparatus using thereof.
Heretofore, there has been widely known an image forming apparatus wherein a finishing device is horizontally connected to a main image forming device of a copying machine, printer or the like, so that an image forming process and a finishing process are sequentially disposed in parallel to thereby pile the processed sheets on a sheet ejecting stacker.
In such an apparatus, since the main image forming device and the finishing device are connected in a horizontal direction, a wide area for installing the whole apparatus is required. Also, a sheet ejecting stacker is projected from a side surface of the main image forming device opposite to a side surface connected to the finishing device, and a sheet ejecting stacker is projected from a side surface of the finishing device opposite to a side surface connected to the main image forming device, so that a considerably wide area for installing the apparatus is required.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a finishing device wherein an area for installing a whole image forming apparatus can be reduced and the whole image forming apparatus can be structured to be compact, and an image forming apparatus using the same.